Although he was seen as a favored candidate for the papacy, the election of Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, as the first American pontiff in history still caught observers off guard. The singularity of the event has quelled, at least until the new pope writes his first encyclical, the usual antagonism and culture-warring between the Catholic left and right. As Matthew Walther writes in the Free Press (May 8), “Leo XIV’s views about a huge number of issues—ranging from the traditional Latin Mass to the possibility of relaxing the norm of clerical celibacy—are totally unknown. In the coming weeks, pundits will speculate about whether his elevation was meant as a less-than-subtle rebuke of Donald Trump, or more specifically of Vance. But these and many other questions can wait. The immediate truth, in all its strangeness, is worth savoring for a while: The election of an American pope—I still cannot believe I am typing those words—is almost a cosmic joke, one whose consequences are presently unknowable.” But some commentators are convinced that Pope Leo’s views are not unknown and that the direction of his papacy is fairly clear. In the liberal National Catholic Reporter (May 8), Sean Michael Winters writes that “for now we can only state, but state with certainty, that the cardinals have chosen someone committed to the reforms Pope Francis began. The new pope will chart his own path, to be sure, but we know the direction in which he is headed.”
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Winters adds that as “the cardinals discussed the future of the church last week, the happy shadow of Francis loomed large. They wanted someone who shared his commitment to synodality [a collaborative approach to church decision-making] and focus on the world’s poor. With Prevost, a mild-mannered man, they also voted for fewer surprises and a steadier hand at the wheel of governance, someone with experience of the Vatican Curia but not a creature of that Curia.” Meanwhile, associate editor Jean-François Mayer provided RW with a translation of an analysis of Pope Leo XIV he wrote for the Swiss daily Freiburger Nachrichten. He writes that the “conclave made a choice of both continuity and appeasement. For the cardinals, the objective was to find a pastoral figure, and at the same time a pontiff capable of strengthening the unity of the church and bringing calm. Leo XIV is a man recognized for his thoughtful character, his ability to synthesize, and his work ethic. He has demonstrated his capacity to lead various structures (diocese, religious order and dicastery) and he knows Rome, where he spent a total of 13 years of his life. This will be useful to him in managing the continuation of the multiple initiatives begun by Francis.”
Mayer adds that “Leo XIV shares Pope Francis’s social commitment and pastoral concerns, but his approach is likely to differ from the bold and disruptive style his predecessor willingly cultivated. The emphasis on unity and communion corresponds to what many bishops around the world were expecting. The arrival of Leo XIV could mark the beginning of a pontificate under the sign of stability. The first appearance of the new pope showed a man both approachable and benevolent, speaking with kindness and simplicity, without oratorical effects, who will be a pope in a different style than figures such as John Paul II or Francis. But in an entirely different way, he has the necessary qualities to become a unifying pontiff. It is also worth noting that those Italian cardinals who wished for the return of an Italian pope did not succeed. From the outset, by using Italian (and a little Spanish to address his former Peruvian diocese), this quadrilingual pope, who is the first North American sovereign pontiff, but with broadly international experience, presented himself in his role as Bishop of Rome and ‘Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church,’ to use one of the titles carried by the pope. His background does not strongly identify him with a national affiliation: he stands in line with the concrete affirmation of the universal character of the Catholic Church.”
